Panda software Antivirus 2007 review

Panda's anti-virus software often receives good reviews because it has a friendly interface and it lacks the complicated settings of some of its rivals.

However, for some time now we have been giving Panda Antivirus a hard time. We have been criticising it for failing to detect many of the samples we've thrown at it, and for being rather expensive. Specifically, Panda Antivirus has had problems detecting Trojans. We didn't really have high hopes for this latest version, either. Having said all that, our test results were surprising.

Well, we were sort of surprised. Our web-based threat test demonstrated once more that Panda Antivirus's ability to detect Trojans and similar files is not the best. In fact, it was the worst by miles, and detected only 11 per cent of the files. If you already use this software then we strongly recommend that you invest in a good anti-spyware program to protect you from web-based malicious files; if you are having difficulty choosing one then you should read our anti-spyware Labs in Shopper October 2006.

However, the biggest surprise for us was that, despite its poor spyware and Trojan detection, Panda Antivirus did incredibly well in the email virus test, picking up 89 per cent of the files. This is comparable with the accuracy displayed by Kaspersky Anti-Virus and Steganos AntiVirus, and is far better than the rest of the competition.

Panda Antivirus is reasonably priced, particularly when you consider that the cost includes a licence to install it on two PCs. The fact that its email virus detection rate is so high means that it is worth considering, particularly if you have already paid for a good anti-spyware utility such as AVG Anti-Spyware 7.5 (formerly known as ewido) to look after the spyware side of things. Panda really needs to improve this area of its software before we can recommend it, though.

Author: Simon Edwards